The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-06-24
WRITING OFFICIAL HISTORY.
The War Records Office and It's Volu-
minOuS Contents
Fnon ne IKashtnqton Star.

The place where war "reminiscences" are
made is here in Washington. 1t is a little
square, graystone building on G street. Any
sort of war Renaissance that is wanted can
be had there on very short notice. The wor
articles that appear in such numbers in
popular magazines and newspapers, written
by great generals and privates with wonder
full recolections, come i'll part or in full
from this place. If general of either army
is called upon by the Century or some other
popular periodical to write his recollections
of the war, he repairs at once to this place
to gather up his recollections. 1t is a sort of
magic cell which awakens tagging memory
| and corrects popular fallacies. Gen. Wal
lace, Gen. Beauregard, Col. Allen, Gen.
CorSe, Gen. Smith and Gen. Sherman all go
there to put on their thinking caps; or,
when they do not go in person, they write
for information. This great wakener of
recollections is the War Records Office.
The amount of information they have col
| lected is almost inconceivable. A great
mass of the material for the war articles
that have appeared in the Century is dug
out of the records there. Many old war
veterans go there and search out the old
/ documents before writing the history of
what they saw. 1t is astonishing how often
they are forced by the cold, dried and we'll
preserved facts to discard pet notions about
how things were, and are obliged to revise
| their impressions about things with which
they had thought themselves entirely
| familiar.
| Frequently officers of the two opposing
armies, who have led the charge against
each others forces, have met here for the
| first time to know each other. Each look
ing at the battle or manouvre from differ
ent standpoint, they come to look over the
records to see how it really was. There is
| Co., Il.
! is no room for any exaggeration. The
records are right at hand to sustain the
truth or to brand as fallacy. Generally,
| both men find that their impressions were
| not quite right. Facts make friends; so they
| soon become cordial There have been
some remarkable meetings here of men who
| have fought hard face to face, but never
met before. All who have met this way
have become friends They sit and talk the
whole thing over, correct each others errors
of memory, or are both set right by the
record. Sherman, Sheridan, Beauregard,
Hunt, Wallace, Long and the younger Lees
have met there Sherman has drawn largely
upon these records in some of his writings.
Gen. Grant, while writing his book was in
constant communication with Gen. Marcus
j. Wright, who does the work of collecting
the Confederate records. A large amount
of the matter in the book was got this way
He also furnished information to the office,
and corrected some erroneous statements
made. jeff Davis has drawn upon this
source for information for use in his book
Gen. Wright has in his possession a letter
book filled with nothing but letters from
Grant and Davis upon the same subjects.
Strange to say, jeff Davis was among the
very first to respond to the call of the gov
eminent for official papers of the Confeder-
acy. He sent all the papers cheerfully as
| soon as he received the request. When the
work of collecting the records was first be-
gun, it was thought that they would never
be able to get enough of the Confederate
papers to make the record complete: but
for nine years now, Gen. Wright has been
writing TO the surviving Confederate officers,
or to the families of officers who We're killed,
and he has succeeded in collecting fully as
| complete a record of the Confederate army
| as is had of the Federal All letters or orders
written by officials or officers of the army
| during the war that relate at all to the sub
ject of the war are collected and compiled
and printed without editing. When the
work is all done, there will have to be an
| other history of the war written from these
records. Many things that have been &c
cepted as truths viii be proved by these
records to be absolutely false. They will
show that officers on both sides have been
overestimated, and that other officers have
never got the credit that was due them
There is a sort of halo of romance sur
rounding all the battles that puts history
in false light. Officers, in writing reports
of battles under the excitement of the time,
have often fallen into the error of exagger-
| ating the enemy's forces. One very popular
error which has been corrected by these rec
ords is with relation to the first battle of
Bull Run. 1t has always been believed that
the Federal forces on that occasion greatly
outnumbered the Confederates 1t has gone
into history so. In the North as well as in
the South it has been accepted as fact
not to be disputed, and the Northern
people have always felt little
have been defeated by so much smaller
| force of Confederates These records
bring to light the fact that there was not a
difference of thousand men between the
strength of the two armies, and of those ac-
tually engaged in the battle, the Confederates
had within five hundred of as many men as
the Federals There are number of other
cases where the odds of battle have been ac-
cepted as very heavy when such was not the
case, and there are the expositions of plans
and purposes that throw an entirely new
| light on history. Besides the official records
| that will all, in course OF time, be bound in
many volumes, Gen. Wright has in his DOS
| session many private letters, written to him
| by officers ON both sides, which will be of
great interest some time.
Another very interesting thing is the col
lection Of photographs of the Union and
Confederate officers. The walls OF the
room in which he works is covered with
these photographs, and several large size
packing boxes are filled with them. He has
the picture of almost any officer on either
side anyone would be likely to want. In
all, he has about 300 of them, from gen
eral to colonies, captains, lieutenants, and
even privates of certain famous corps. One
of the latter groups is Bulbor's Battery, G..
s. artillery. Federal and Confederate
officers are hung together indiscriminately
in the collection, with here and there a
minister or priest. All the famous COM
handing officers, and hundreds who won
fame within q narrower limit, are there.
The collection includes a great many pic
lures not to be had elsewhere, and this gal
lery has been drawn upon largely for illus